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| Nazi Math |
“Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or
obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being
Irish isn't a skill... it's a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn't say I'm
proud to be 5'11"; I'm proud to have a pre-disposition for colon cancer.”
–George Carlin
I begin with this quote from the late great Carlin because
it’s a calm, measured introduction for what I’m about to say. Carlin famously
never understood national pride; this segment of his stand up shows how foolish
and irrational it is to have pride in one’s ethnicity or country of origin –
pride should be an emotion linked to achievements – not things that are simple
truths about oneself. If you were born in America, Carlin suggests, it
shouldn’t be pride you feel about
your nation. The descriptor you’re looking for is happy, or glad at the
circumstances of your citizenship. Unless you were once the citizen of a
different country, who became a citizen of the USA. That’s something you worked
towards, you studied and jumped through hoops and passed a test then achieved
American citizenship – that accomplishment is worthy of pride. You can be proud
to serve your country in the Armed
Forces – completing bootcamp and surviving combat are honorable accomplishments.
But to claim you’re proud of being white, as if “white” in and of itself is a
heritage – is fucking senseless, and as I’ll explain: cowardly and dangerous.
Let me digress before I start foaming at the mouth. I, as a
Caucasian American-born woman, have enjoyed many freedoms not granted to a
Chinese woman of the same generation, or a Russian woman, or an Egyptian woman,
and millions of other women who live under oppressive regimes. For this, I am
grateful. Sadly – because of an accident of my birth, I also enjoy freedoms not shared by fellow American women who
are of a different race, and I don’t
share certain privileges enjoyed by my white-male American counterparts. I
fully admit and acknowledge that the nation of my birth, my parents’ birth,
their parents’ birth – and of many of my ancestors dating back until the late
1800s – is an imperfect and unequal one. Because of many blunders made by our
Founding Fathers and those that followed them in government, our nation suffers
from an ugly division that has historically favored white, well-to-do males in all
things, at the expense of all others – namely the natives we forced to near
extinction on their own continent, and the lives we enslaved from the African
continent to grow our crops and perform the hardest of labors. The Britons and
the Spaniards may have brought slavery and started a genocide on our
hemisphere, but Americans allowed those evils to flourish. The Revolutionaries
declared independence from an empire, proclaiming “life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness” for all, but hypocritically only meant it about white dudes.
After the success of the Revolutionary War, we initially welcomed immigrants to
our shores, with a specific caveat – you had to be white.
“The original United States Naturalization Law of March 26,
1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States
in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to
immigrants who were free white persons of good character. It thus excluded
American Indians, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks and later Asians
although free blacks were allowed citizenship at the state level in certain
states. It also provided for citizenship for the children of U.S. citizens born
abroad, stating that such children "shall be considered as natural born
citizens," the only US statute ever to use the term."[i]
So: things have been imbalanced from the start. As we
reached the economic challenge of industrialization in the mid- 1800s, the
government sought to stop the spread of slavery to new states. Slavery - in
addition to being inhumane and evil - is also a financially backward practice.
The Civil War broke out so that Southern plantation owners could retain their
wealth and political influence which was rooted in the value of the slaves they
owned. They convinced their impoverished, white cohorts to fight for their cause by
exploiting racial and xenophobic tensions – “if the slaves are freed, they’ll
rape your women, steal your livelihoods, kill you just for being white.” The
rubes back then were too uneducated and miserable to see that the people actually exploiting them were the
plantation oligarchs themselves; that by exploiting the unpaid labor of slaves
they were avoiding having to pay people of any
race to do the work – thus keeping the profits at the top, and the rest of the
farmers and tradesmen arguing over the scraps at the bottom.
The South failed to secede and the Union was preserved and
slavery abolished. We know what followed – Jim Crow and the KKK and the
legislative adherence to racial subjugation of people of color, the systemic
use of terror to keep black people and brown people and yellow and red people in
their place at the bottom of the pecking order. Women regardless of color
didn’t get to vote until 1920. Other minorities (LGBTQ) are still fighting for
protections in the workplace and in society at large just for being who they
are. Post Civil-Rights era, things started to look better for non-white dudes on paper: but as we see today, despite
the leaps and bounds we’ve made as a nation over two centuries, we’re still
working on guaranteeing access to the American Dream – “life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness” to all of its
citizens, and all those who seek to become Americans. These past sins are and should be a source of shame –
but no one living today owned a slave (sexual slavery is still alive and well
but that’s a criminal offense and a rant for a different day), nor fought for
the South in the Civil War – we should simply accept the ugliness of our
history, and leave the ugliness there – in the past. Modern Germany has done
this exceedingly well in the way they treat their past. Most German people
alive today are descended from Nazis or Nazi sympathizers – but the evil has been
acknowledged, Neo-Nazis are denied their hate speech in public space, it is a
crime to even draw a swastika, and relics of the Third Reich are relegated to
museums, while Holocaust memorials are prominent. The past has been condemned in Germany – but it is far
from forgotten.
It is not so here in America. During the decades before WW2,
white Southerners worked tirelessly to erect statues and pay homage to their
grandfathers and relatives who fought for the Confederacy; still crushed by the
loss, they sniveled about a war of “Northern aggression,” completely ignoring
the fact that their grandfathers died for a cause that would never have
benefitted them, and would have oppressed millions of people because of an
accident of their birth. The display of the Confederate flag and the worship of
Robert E. Lee and other generals are not
a celebration of heritage – they are a celebration of white privilege, a boot
on the neck of the descendants of slaves. We should have stomped out these
displays long ago, but racists and bigots hide behind the First Amendment –raising
a banner of hatred they label “history,” and this pathetic worship of an army
of TREASONOUS ANTI-AMERICANS who sought to prolong SLAVERY has continued into
the modern era. This is a black mark on the American soul, and it sickens me. This
Alt-right protest of the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee has nothing to
do with the erasure of their beloved “heritage:” it has everything to do with
the fact that by condemning the sins of their fathers, we as a nation are
threatening their perceived position at the top of the pecking order as white
Americans – and they will stop at nothing to preserve their supposed
superiority over the rest of us.
I am not ashamed to be American. I cannot help where I was
born, or the culture I grew up in. I can only accept accountability for the
ways in which my adult life can shape the America of the future for my son. The
America I hope to see, and am working towards with every ballot I cast and
interaction I engage in, is one where education is affordable and accessible to
all, where economic inequality is minimal and a non-factor in the quality of a
person’s life (because all people should have excellent healthcare without the
catastrophic costs of insurance or services, the ability to have a job that
will pay for basic necessities in addition to living costs), where the color of
your skin or your gender or the gender of the person whom you love is
irrelevant when you walk down the street, drive your car, or apply for a job. I
want an America where all ethnic backgrounds and religions are considered
legitimate and belonging to one isn’t favored over another at any time for any
reason, where we can be different as individuals but the same in the level of
respect we show one another and receive from government officials and police.
It’s an idyllic concept, and it will likely never come to pass – but that is
what I would like to happen. It is
possible to achieve this, but until we address our pernicious social and
cultural wounds, it will remain only
a dream.
Confusion about national pride, in the way George Carlin
addressed above, is one of the many contributing factors to the festering mess
of a nation we live in today. As marginalized people fight to be recognized and
treated as human beings under the black cloud of the Trump Administration, the
cancer of white nationalism has come out of remission with no signs of
stopping. Most recently, an epic fuck up at a hate-rally resulted in one woman’s
death and the death of two police officers this past weekend in
Charlottesville, VA. The woman was an anti-white nationalist protester who was
mowed down by a member of the Vanguard America, a white nationalist hate group,
and the police officers died in a helicopter crash en route to respond to
rising tensions between the Alt-right rally and the counter-protesters who
turned up to drown them out. All three deaths were entirely avoidable; I will
leave it up to the authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible.
The blood is ultimately on the hands of the white supremacists that have
crawled out of the dirt they previously occupied before the election of Donald
Trump, emboldened by their chosen leader’s ambivalence to their racially and
ethnically motivated hatred of the ‘other.’ BUT THAT’S NOT EVEN THE END OF IT.
DAYS later, DAYS! Trump finally
condemned the KKK and white nationalists, but fucking back-tracked his statement, doubling down on his initial insistence that
“the alt-left is as much to blame for the violence (in Virginia) as the
alt-right.” Stew on that for a while. I’ll get back to that.
We find ourselves in a familiar situation now as the decade preceding
WW2 in the USA.[ii]
In the 1930s, during the grip of the Great Depression, fascism was quite
popular among white Americans. Capitalism and democracy had failed the majority
of lower class Americans, but the most prevalent contemporary alternative, communism,
was widely despised. All forms of socialism were painted with an evil brush in
this era, which is why fascism seemed to be working well in Germany under
Hitler –we know now that the economic recovery under his regime was
exploitative and exaggerated, but at the time, it appealed to many impoverished
white Americans. In 2017, the money is yet again concentrated up at the top in
the offshore accounts of the ultra-rich 1%, and most other people are
struggling to make ends meet, especially people of color, but also blue-collar
whites, whose manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to automation, government
failure to enforce anti-trust laws, and good old fashioned corporate greed.
But an ailing economy alone doesn’t explain the rise of
white nationalism/supremacy/fascism in modern America, even though it is a
large part of it. Sociologist Mitch Berbrier wrote a paper studying the beliefs
of the growing white nationalist movement back in 2000[iii],
and found that the movement could generally be boiled down to 5 core beliefs: (1)
that whites are victims of discrimination (2) that their rights are being
abrogated (3) that they are stigmatized if they express "pride” (4) that
they are being psychologically affected through the loss of self-esteem (5)
that the end product of all of this is the elimination of "the white
race." These are sociocultural concepts, and I will address and refute
them all, and not necessarily in the most professional or dispassionate of
words, by each bullet point. Disclaimer: FACTS REFUTE THESE KINDS OF
MISCONCEPTIONS, WHICH IS WHY TRUMP-SUPPORTERS HAVE LITTLE TO NO USE FOR FACTS,
AND WHY YOU WILL SEE SO MUCH OVERLAP BETWEEN THE ALT-RIGHT (READ: NEO-FASCIST
OR NEO-NAZI) AND THE TRUMP SUPPORT BASE.
BULLSHIT WHITE SUPREMACIST BELIEF #1: “whites are victims of
discrimination”
·
NOPE. Ignorant white people like to think that
“reverse racism” is real, and that affirmative action keeps deserving whites
from getting into college or landing jobs, but that’s not supported by FACTS. In
truth, the college admissions system is horribly flawed, and despite the
incorporation of affirmative action in the process, it still wildly favors rich
white students: “legacy” admissions and donation admissions almost exclusively
benefit whites. See: George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump – mediocre students at
best, but are graduates of Yale and Wharton because of who their daddies were.
Elite universities AND public ones want students who will graduate and go off
to become wealthy alumni to drive their donations (READ: CHILDREN OF THE 1% and
STUDENT ATHLETES TO HELP FUND THE COLLEGE SPORTS INDUSTRY REGARDLESS OF RACE),
and until we start funding higher education differently, the admissions system
will remain unfair for students of all colors and socioeconomic backgrounds. Corporate
hiring still wildly favors white employees, even corporations who claim to be
for diversity (lookin at you, denizens of Silicon Valley), because white people
are more likely to have bachelor’s degrees and are more amenable to accept
unpaid internships and part time work because their parents are more likely to
have the means to support them as they get established in a career. I’m not
suggesting that white people are at all smarter or more driven than people of
color – I’m saying that financially they tend to be better off because of the
way wealth is concentrated in home ownership, even though millions of white
people suffer below the poverty line. Don’t even get me started on how white
people benefit from their whiteness in everyday life – cops don’t harass them
with as much frequency as POC (people of color – I will from now on use this
acronym to refer to Black, Latino, people of Middle Eastern descent, Asians –
basically anyone who isn’t Caucasian) and whites aren’t prosecuted with the
severity of POC when charged with crimes, if they were charged at all. The
whole justice system is discriminatory against POC. It’s been proven that
whites commit crimes at the same rates as other racial groups, but up to 70% of
people occupying our prisons are black or brown people, when they only make up
not even 50% of the national population. The idea that white people are being
discriminated against by private business or higher education or in the justice
system is nonsense, plain and simple.
BULLSHIT WHITE SUPREMACIST BELIEF #2: “whites’ rights are
being abrogated”
·
Abrogated means “eroded or rolled back,” FYI.
Let me be as clear as I possibly can: JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE HAS THE SAME
ABILITY FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT TO DO SOMETHING THAT UNTIL RECENTLY ONLY WHITE
GUYS HAD THE EXCLUSIVE PRIVILIGE OF ENJOYING, DOES NOT MEAN THEIR RIGHTS ARE
BEING TAKEN AWAY. Because POC citizens are allowed to vote does not change the
fact that WHITE MEN HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE RIGHT TO VOTE! Guaranteeing a POC
access to institutions and titles and positions that were previously only held
by white men DOES NOT TAKE AWAY THEIR ACCESS TO THEM. This argument is mostly a
sniveling complaint about having to compete with non-whites for things, when in
bygone eras you could be average and mediocre and still get a decent job and
make good money. NOT ONCE HAS A WHITE MAN’S CIVIL RIGHTS BEEN THREATENED IN A
WAY THAT RELATED TO THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN. White women – and all women – are
threatened daily these days with restrictions to reproductive rights;
restrictions which are being put in place by WHITE MEN in Congress. All members
of the LGBTQ community are threatened by the legislative evil of the same group
of WHITE MEN. So yes – some white’s rights ARE being abrogated – AT THE HANDS
OF WHITE MEN.
BULLSHIT WHITE SUPREMACIST BELIEF #3: “whites are
stigmatized if they express "pride”’
·
This is where Carlin’s argument comes in. Let’s
be real: mainstream culture is driven by white people. We are overrepresented
on film, in print (both fiction and non-fiction), in the media – it’s a sea of
white faces with some black, brown, and Asian ones mixed in. Because Americans
stripped African slaves of their heritage and culture during the 17th-18th
centuries, their descendants have had to forge their own amalgamated experience
as black people. It’s truly unique and horrific when you stop to think of it. African
Americans have contributed to our culture and enriched it, but very few can say
which part of Africa their great great great great great grandfather was stolen
from or what their cultural customs and religious beliefs were. As a white
person, I know my ancestors came from Italy, Germany, Ireland, Sweden – and I
know how these ethnic groups influenced American customs – because those histories weren’t purposefully erased. Minority
groups are stigmatized and routinely overlooked in the arts, so when they
create magazines or TV networks that cater to them, it’s not racism at work. Racism is why they needed to create these
platforms to begin with. It’s fine to enjoy the cultural customs of your
ethnic ancestors: we have so many ethnically Irish people in America we
celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as a nation. It’s a giant consumerist money trap –
don’t deny it. Even if you aren’t Irish at all you’ve probably put in a green
shirt and got drunk at a parade. You all know a guy who is Greek or Italian or
some other ethnic group who is very proud of this fact. There are countless
comedies that joke about this; it’s generally not malicious or carried out with
ill intent. It’s mostly about cuisine and festivals and things that are
centered in LOVE. But very many people in this country are descended from the
ethnically British people who fought in the American Revolution, or their
German/Swedish/Irish family came over to America so long ago they have no close
connection to their European roots. They are just ‘white,’ culturally that has
its own connotations if you grew up in the former Confederacy or the
mid/southwest. The trouble is that there’s nothing indicative of whiteness that
deserves celebration. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. Like Carlin said: celebrating your
ethnicity is as illogical as celebrating a predisposition for a kind of
illness. Communities tend to celebrate people who excel at certain things –
this guy is a great athlete, that girl is a great artist, that kid is a math
phenom, that mom can really sing, etc. At the national level, we like talented
people – look no further than the 9284876234 dance/voice/cupcake baking
competitions on television. People on
Youtube don’t even need to be particularly talented to become famous and make
money off of their feeds – they just need a clever gimmick. This leaves a lot
of average people out there yearning for a way to differentiate themselves, to
be special. It’s just the way society works, unfortunately. You want to be
seen, heard, fulfilled by something that sets you apart. PEOPLE WHO LOOK TO
THEIR WHITE AMERICAN ROOTS AND EXCLUSIVELY FIND FULFILLMENT IN THEIR ETHNIC
BACKGROUND ARE PEOPLE WHO LACK ACCOMPLISHMENTS OR ACCOLADES IN OTHER ASPECTS OF
LIFE. It is ok to display with pride aspects of one’s heritage and to identify
as “Irish” or “Thai” or “Colombian,” and if you move abroad and live as an
expat American in a foreign land, it should be acceptable for you to celebrate
4th of July and eat hot dogs and apple pie and play baseball. It is
NOT okay to claim that because you are of an ethnic background, this entitles
you to more or makes you better than other ethnic groups. Being white does NOT
make you superior in anyway, so being proud of being white to the point where
you have to go out of your way to announce it in a nation that already caters to people who look and live
very much like you is somewhat ridiculous. Your worth as a person is not
tied to your skin color – it is in the things you do and say, in the ways you
contribute to society. You may be economically frustrated and perhaps shunned
by your community for social awkwardness or for being a fan of something
not-mainstream – but don’t look to your whiteness as an answer to your
alienation. We need to work harder as a society to stop alienating young people
for being different and we need to stop glorifying people who excel at certain
things and not others. If we embrace inclusion and shame people for bullying
introverts and the less outgoing, we can reduce the number of white men who
turn to white nationalism as a kind of support group to build up their esteem.
If all races and ethnicities and religions are fairly represented in
entertainment and in government and in corporate and small business, the desire
for racially/ethnically specific media will decrease. Until then, it will be
necessary for POC to create venues to showcase their American experience – and white people shouldn’t be offended
by that, since mainstream networks and literature and film already heavily
feature white people. George Carlin also famously said – “you can actually
change the station! It's called freedom of choice!”
BULLSHIT WHITE SUPREMACIST BELIEF #4: “whites are being
psychologically affected through the loss of self-esteem
·
This is tied to my above rant, so let me
reiterate: just because you are alienated and disaffected and have no self-esteem
because of any number of reasons linked to your employment or the failure to
live up to the American Dream or your expectations of how your life should have
gone, it does not excuse the scapegoating
of [insert ethnicity/religion/race] people. Stan Lee, of Marvel Comics
fame, had this to say way back in 1968, and he expresses my opinion perfectly:
·
There is not a finite amount of personal
fulfillment on the planet. All people are disappointed by something in their
lives at some point, or suffer setbacks, or are unhappy by the way something
turned out. That doesn’t make you special.
Most of us are dealt shitty hands – we must cope with it, rise above it. Life
and culture are always evolving, and sometimes change is painful and not in our
best interest. You should work towards making the systems that govern us more
fair and less prone to bribery and manipulation so that all people can benefit
and have a fair chance at happiness – assembling on a lawn with torches
screaming about how other races are plotting against you is not productive. If
you really believe that, the response should be rewriting the system so that a
characteristic of birth cannot be a factor in the way resources are allocated.
White nationalists seek to dominate in a world that will favor their own race
in perpetuity because historically that has been the case in practice, if not
on the books (and as I pointed out – racist laws have been on the books since
at least 1790). And because they don’t always get traction the lawful way, they
terrify and threaten the safety of the people who oppose them – which is the
same tactic employed by ISIS and every other terrorist group. Anguish suffered
by whites is not in any way caused by
the equal treatment of POC. Anguish is individual, caused by strife and mental
illness and adversity and social and relational imbalance. It cannot be blamed
solely on a group of marginalized people. Blame instead the ravenous economic
paradigm, the political climate that stigmatizes mental illness and rewards
bullying and selfishness – and then work through peaceful legitimate means to change these injustices.
BULLSHIT WHITE SUPREMACIST BELIEF #5: “the end product of
all of the other reasons is the elimination of "the white race."’
·
Consequences—even imaginary ones—are necessary
to paint oneself as a victim. The sociological theory of "the dramatization
of injury and innocence” asserts the (false) notion that you’re just a
blameless bystander and your attackers are everywhere, and they wish you harm.
Once you’ve bought into all this other bullshit – that the great white race is
under attack from foreign or colored invaders and your identity and culture as
a white person is in danger – it’s not too far a leap to the violent,
dehumanizing realm that the Alt-Right occupies. For these white dudes, they are
soldiers in a race war, and the enemy is colored Americans who are out to erase
their historical and cultural contributions to humanity. In reality, MINORITIES
DON’T WANT TO ERASE WHITES – THEY WANT TO BE FINALLY TREATED WITH THE RESPECT
AND FAIRNESS WHITES ENJOY FROM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM AND IN SOCIETY AT LARGE. Black
Lives Matter, a movement created in response to the careless violence inflicted
by law enforcement against black people, is NOT a hate group. There have been
several tragic incidents resulting in the deaths of police officers and
innocent protesters at BLM events – but their stance is not one of hate. They simply want to be treated as HUMAN FUCKING
BEINGS by the agents of the state that are supposed to protect and serve the
public. White nationalists, white supremacists, fascists, the Alt-right – from
now on I’m just referring to them as NAZIS because that is essentially their
shared ideology – their stance is one of hatred and violence. They are already
respected as human beings by law enforcement and the government – look no further
than Charlottesville for fucking proof. There were white para-military assholes
patrolling and protecting the Nazis protesting the removal of that statue – at
one point during the march on Saturday they were even pushing up
against the riot line – physically resisting the police! DID ANY OF THESE NAZIS
GET SHOT OR ROUGHED UP BY THE POLICE FOR THEIR INSOLENCE!?!?!? No. None of them
did. Heather Heyer was run over by a car for standing against fascism, though.
19 other people were injured in the same incident that should have been stopped
before it even started because the police were afraid of infringing of First
Amendment Rights. That is what we call white privilege – plain and simple.
Black people cannot protest their inhumane treatment in a peaceful manner with
a guarantee they will walk away alive – where is the concern about protecting
THEIR FUCKING FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS?
Now that you understand why and how we have arrived at this
crossroad, I will say with full and complete confidence: there is a line in
the fucking sand. On my side are those who fully reject fascism, Nazism, white
nationalism, white supremacy, violence in the name of heritage, violence
against a group of people simply because of the skin color or their religion or
ethnicity, hatred based on bigotry and ignorance and ‘alternative facts.’ On
the other side are the Nazis and all who are too cowardly to condemn them, too
craven to denounce hate, too wishy washy to take a stand at all about anything.
DONALD FUCKING TRUMP IS ON THIS SIDE. It doesn’t matter now what your stance is
on economic policy, or foreign diplomacy, or the role of government in private
matters. EITHER YOU ARE OPPOSED TO THEIR HATEFUL IDEOLOGY AND EVERYTHING THEY
STAND FOR OR YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN THEIR VIOLENCE. There is no middle ground.
There is no middle ground. There is no middle ground. If you are not actively,
with every opportunity, DENOUNCING Nazism and ignorant-ass white supremacist
comments, you are enabling this to continue. Your default fucking position
should be anti-fascist, pro-democracy, pro-equality. If it is not – if you
continue to defend Trump and his Nazi apologist cronies – YOU ARE THE FUCKING
PROBLEM.
WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE DOMESTIC TERRORISTS WHO USE THE SAME
TACTICS AS ISLAMIC FUNDEMENTALISTS TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS. Would you support a
pro-ISIS rally on a college campus near you? All those in attendance are
American born citizens; would you seek to protect their First Amendment rights
as they spouted hatred? I bet you wouldn’t. I bet you would fully support their
violent smack down, labeling the rally a terrorist assemblage, mass arrests and
likely mass casualties. If you are
anti-Muslim terrorism you should feel the exact same fucking way about white
domestic terrorists! In fact, white male Christians have carried out more gun
massacres in this country than Muslim male terrorists. We always hear more
about the Muslim shooters, because since 9/11 we have been conditioned to hate
Muslims – but you are far more likely to die at the hands of a disgruntled
white dude than a fundamentalist Muslim one. Radicalized hatred is wrong and
should be stamped out no matter what the ideology – whether it uses an imagined
heritage or a prophet to justify it’s existence. We should be treating these
fuckers with the same disdain and paranoia we reserve for Islamic terrorist
groups – they should be put on watch lists and prevented from obtaining
firearms because their ideology is centered in bigotry and violence. The First
Amendment allows for peaceful assemblage and does not protect hate speech –
they only have hateful assemblages
and hate speech.
Heather Heyer is an American patriot and a martyr for the
causes of justice and freedom. The KKK found glee in her murder, their leader
said he was glad she died, and Trump was praised for his refusal to
condemn the movement with conviction. "Thank you President Trump for your
honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn
the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," David Duke (KKK leader) wrote,
referring to Black Lives Matter and the anti-fascist movement.
Anti-fascists could
not and would not exist if fascism
wasn’t still a fucking problem in our society. Trump wants to paint the
counter-protesters, who showed up with bats and pepper spray to defend themselves
because the Alt-Right is known to lash out physically against those who oppose
them – as the true villains, equal in the blame. Both sides used violence that
day, yes – BUT ONLY ONE OF THOSE FUCKING SIDES HAD NAZIS ON IT. There is no
centrist position on this. There is no equivalency between antifa and the white
supremacists organizations. NONE. If you think there is, you’ve sided with the
Nazis, and I cannot respect your cowardice.
So either you come out against Trump, against the KKK,
against fascism and Nazism – or else you are supporting it with your pathetic
ambivalence. Don’t bury your head in the sand. You don’t need to go out into
the street screaming “fuck Trump” – but you need to denounce all that he and
the Nazis stand for whenever the occasion arises. You need to choose democracy,
choose the true American ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
for ALL. Be angry, and take action, otherwise you’re going to wind up in a mass
grave dug by the Nazis – or you’ll by digging those graves yourself.
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
